NYC's 7 High-Tech Campus Proposals Are All Over The Map

In the end, seven different groups submitted proposals to the city for a new high-tech applied science school, and they are quite the group! Ranging from more of the same (NYU and friend's Downtown Brooklyn proposal, Columbia's Manhattanville proposal) to more Ivy League (Cornell on Roosevelt Island) to straight up international (India's Amity University's Governor's Island proposal) there is something for everyone. In fact, the ideas have been such an embarrassment of riches that the city now is hinting it might, in the end, pick two.

"I think it would be great if all seven could come," Mayor Bloomberg has said. "But the bottom line is even if we could find the space, the city doesn’t have that kind of capital. But we’ll see."

Though the city initially was offering access to City-owned land and up to $100 million in City capital for a school on either Roosevelt Island, Governor's Island or the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the final proposals came in from all over the map. Here's who submitted and where they want their campuses:

New York University/University of Toronto/University of Warwick (UK)/The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay/City University of New York and Carnegie Mellon (Downtown Brooklyn)

New York Genome Center/Mount Sinai School of Medicine/Rockefeller University/SUNY Stony Brook (Midtown Manhattan)

Stanford University/City College of New York (Roosevelt Island)

The proposals aren't just all over the map geographically, they also range in size from 400,000 square feet to 2 million, with initial investments promised starting at $800 million and going up from there. "While there is significant work to be done to evaluate these proposals and select a winner or winners, we are humbled and pleased by the academic community’s response to Applied Sciences NYC," Deputy Mayor Robert Steel said yesterday. The city estimates that a new high-tech campus in town could generate around $6 billion in economic activity over the next 35 years, along with more than 30,000 permanent and construction jobs for New Yorkers.

The city says it should be able to announce the winner as soon as January 1. But first, however, an Applied Sciences NYC advisory committee is set to review and grade the seven proposals on things like feasibility and job creation potential. As of now there is no word on how the city would finance more than one proposal if they were to accept them.